Dogma does not help fund schools

IT is sad to hear the same old dogma from Martin Rogers and Graham Lane regarding transitional protection for ex-grant-maintained schools (TES, December 13).

The schools receiving this help are in local education authorities where the level of school funding is still at an unacceptable level - the reason we opted out in the frst place.

LEAs find it cheaper to pay a few thousand pounds to a handful of ex-GM schools than to increase the percentage of funds going into all schools'

budgets which would transfer millions of pounds from county hall bureaucracies to under-funded schools.

Local councils also blame those few schools for robbing their colleagues of much-needed funds. I hope schools forums are going to reveal how much of our education budget is "top-sliced" before setting schools' budgets. Then we will see where the real robbers are lurking.

My primary school relies on this protection for 5 per cent of its budget - removing that money would lead to redundancies among the non-teaching staff.

Messrs Rogers and Lane should consider the effects of their views on real people instead of peddling out-dated anti-GM dogma for political reasons.